A new study by paleoecologist Margaret Fraiser at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, offers an interesting new theory behind the cause of the Earth's largest extinction: copious carbon-dioxide

When most people hear the phrase "the earth's largest
extinction", they think dinosaurs.

Margaret
Frasier knows better. As a paleoecologist, she knows that the Earth's
largest mass extinction of life occurred at the end of the Permian Period at the end of the Paleozoic Era; 252
million years before the first T-Rex ever walked the earth. The
extinction destroyed the large
land amphibians' dominance of the land, and paved the way for
dinosaurs to emerge as the dominant land species.

University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee professor Margaret Frasier is studying
this extinction avidly, looking for possible details to further our
understandings of what might have caused this landmark event.

Her recent conclusions, published in an Elsevier journal [1]
[2] (PDF)
and detailed in a recent
press release titled "When Bivalves Ruled the World," describe an
Earth with run-away carbon dioxide levels. She concludes that the
Permian-Triassic mass-extinction was caused by toxic, oxygen-less oceans created by too much
atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2).

The Permian-Triassic extinction event wiped out nearly 70 percent of species on land and 95 percent of
sea species.

“Estimates of the CO2 in the atmosphere then were between six and 10 times
greater than they are today,” Frasier states. The largest continuous
volcanic eruption on Earth – known as the “Siberian Traps” – had been pumping
out CO2 for about a million years prior to the Permian-Triassic mass
extinction.

Her hypothesis is that high CO2 levels at the close of the Permian Period
caused global warming, greatly increasing global temperatures. With no
cold water at the poles, ocean circulation slowed, and the oceans were unable
to mix with the little oxygen left in the air.

She cites a variety of evidence of high CO2 and low ocean oxygen levels in this
fossil record. One piece of evidence is darkened rock from underwater
fossil strata of the time. Darkening in ocean rock of this nature
indicates a low amount of oxygen at the time of formation.

Frasier also collected evidence to support her theory in the form of
bivalve fossils. The only survivors of the extinction were bivalve mollusks
and gastropods -- snails. Only shallow water, tiny, small-shelled
varieties with high metabolisms and a flat shape, which allowed them to spread
out while feeding to extract more oxygen, survived. Deeper water
varieties, where there was less oxygen, and larger shelled varieties, which
needed more oxygen, became extinct, disappearing from the fossil record.

A final piece of evidence cited is the disappearance of the coral reefs.
Coral reefs die if their environment lacks sufficient oxygen.

Comments

Threshold

Username

Password

remember me

This article is over a month old, voting and posting comments is disabled

Ha ha. That joke is quite stale already. Perhaps if you had at least glanced at the blog before poking fun at the blogger's GW views then you would have noticed that this had nothing to do with dinosaurs.

Yet he brings up a valid point: where did the the CO2 come from? The thing that has always bothered me about GW proponents is that one moment they are talking about climate changes in the past, and the next moment blaming human activities for current Climate Changes, without ever stopping and thinking about what they just said: the global Climate has changed numerous times in the past and would have changed in the future even if humanity had never existed.

quote:Yet he brings up a valid point: where did the the CO2 come from?

Me:

quote: The largest continuous volcanic eruption on Earth – known as the “Siberian Traps” – had been pumping out CO2 for about a million years prior to the Permian-Triassic mass extinction

I think I explained pretty well, where the CO2 came from. Next time read before you post, please.

quote: The thing that has always bothered me about GW proponents is that one moment they are talking about climate changes in the past, and the next moment blaming human activities for current Climate Changes, without ever stopping and thinking about what they just said: the global Climate has changed numerous times in the past and would have changed in the future even if humanity had never existed.

First of all, this is not an article about a study on modern GW, so why are you so threatened??

Secondly, you appear to think that is not important to learn from historical events. This is a very foolish perspective, from a purely societal perspective and from a scientific perspective.

It is obvious that the climate is not static. As I mentioned in my follow up quote above, it would take humans a while time to increase the amount of CO2 to this level, after all we are talking about matching the level of output of an epic million year long seismic event.

One thing to bear in mind though, is that the climate has not always been the kind that humans would find comfortable, if you look back through prehistory. If we push the climate to the high side of "natural" temperatures, then life will become particularly uncomfortable for large areas of the Earth.

Remember, the key thing about man's impact is that we are shifting where carbon is distributed, from the land (plants, natural resource deposits) to the sky. We are also concentrating pollutants, such as mercury, sulfur, benzene, and ammonium into deposits and emissions many more times more concentrated than those found in nature. This is the dangerous thing about CO2 emissions and pollution in general--its the concentration, not the substances.

Also, another important thing to remember is that in the past, CO2 levels could be decreased by large amounts of photosynthetic organisms. However, if we pollute oceans too much for photosynthetic plankton to grow and deforest the land, then the CO2 is staying exactly in the sky. If this is the scenario, the carbon won't be coming back into the soil, like it could in the period that this story covers.

Remember, this is a paleontology article. You are the only one choosing to make this into a modern GW issue.

> "If we push the climate to the high side of "natural" temperatures, then life will become particularly uncomfortable for large areas of the Earth."

This certainly sounds like another attempt to link the Permian to modern-day GW. But regardless, I dispute your claim. Global warming affects the coldest, driest portions of the Earth the most. Tropical regions are hardly affected at all. This is the one thing that all climatologists agree upon. It's backed up both by the historical record and GCM modelling predictions.

A 5-8 degree warming (twice what the IPCC is predicting by the year 2100) would mean an area like Siberia or Greenland might warm as much as 16 degrees, converting from an arctic climate to a temperate (this has in fact happened several times before). But tropical regions would experience perhaps only a degree of warming...some may actually cool slightly. If you live anywhere near these hottest areas, don't expect to see any difference.

Winters in Northern Europe would become far more pleasant. Summers in Southern Europe might rise a couple degrees. Very slightly less congenial, for sure, but still less than natural variability in those regions.

On the other hand, far large expanses of land would become much more habitable and comfortable. GW means a more temperate climate overall, with the net temperature difference between the equator and the poles reduced. It does not mean overall warming of all regions.

I think you did not understand what I said, even though, oddly, you quoted me on it, which would seem to indicate that you did.

I agree with your statements on what the effect of modest warming would be. However, most people would not like to have to deal with tropical/near-tropical level heat. And more importantly if the water levels rise due to melting ice, large populations will be displaced. Also desertification would become an increasing problem. And then there are problems such as pest migration. Life would be less comfortable for large areas, I stand by my statement.

Anyways, I've had my say on this topic, so I am done for now. You will probably repost a disagreement to my comment, I suppose, sadly.

And I responded in kind. The upper latitudes would be affected positively. The tropics would be largely unaffected. That leaves only the temperate regions, which may be positively or negatively affected, but only to a small degree either way.

That's the whole world right there. There are no other "large areas" to be affected.

> "if the water levels rise due to melting ice, large populations will be displaced"

Sea levels are rising 2-3mm/year, same as they have been for the past 7,000 years. And if you assume that rate rises sharply-- so? Even then it means that, over the course of a couple centuries, a few million people will need to move. Want to guess how many millions of people have moved, of their own free will, to Florida just in the past 50 years?

When you're talking about such long time scales, a few million people moving isn't a problem. Its a far better (and cheaper) solution than radical proposals that drastically raise the cost of energy, thereby risking economic chaos and forcing third-world nations to remain undeveloped. Far better to let nations like Bangladesh develop a modern economy, so its people can easily afford whatever minor mitigation measures might be necesssary.

quote: First of all, this is not an article about a study on modern GW, so why are you so threatened??

Because you made the link!

quote: Also, during this period in the Paleozoic, their were far less large land animals (like 6 billion humans) than there are today.

I'll say it again. I thought this was an interesting article, but where do you make the link to todays issue. I buy into the natural cycle or natural events side of the GW so this was interesting, but where's the human link?

quote: We are also concentrating pollutants, such as mercury, sulfur, benzene, and ammonium into deposits and emissions many more times more concentrated than those found in nature. This is the dangerous thing about CO2 emissions and pollution in general--its the concentration, not the substances.

Do you have an estimate as to the amount of CO2 we are dumping into the air every year?

quote: Volcanic activity releases about 130 to 230 teragrams (145 million to 255 million short tons) of carbon dioxide each year.[7

(Wikipedia-Volcanos) Now how big do you think a million years worth of continual eruptions would be? Like you said it's concentration not the substance.